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If not for lack of money, a Japanese aviation pioneer could have beaten the American Wright Brothers to achieving the world's first powered and fully controlled manned flight - a Japanese aviation expert claims.

According to Agenše France-Presse, former aerodynamics professor Tsuneo Noguchi is convinced Chuhachi Ninomiya - the fourth son of a samurai born in 1866 - would have beaten the Wright brothers by about a decade if he could have raised the money to buy an engine for the aircraft he designed.

While this year will mark the centenary of the achievements of Orville and Wilbur Wright, it also marks the 112th anniversary of the unmanned, powered flight by Ninomiya's revolutionary Karasu, or Crow, model monoplane which had fixed wings, a rubber band-powered propeller and tricycle landing gear - an innovation that only became the norm on aircraft from about 1930 onwards. Ninomiya's pioneering work was celebrated in Japan earlier this week.

According to Noguchi, Ninomiya's design principles - especially fixed wings when most European pioneers were experimenting with flapping wings - were on the right track to achieve manned, powered flight.

It is no idle, nationalistic boast: Noguchi built an aircraft based on another of Ninomiya's designs - the Tamamushi (Jewel Bug) - and flew it 50 m in April 1991. "The original Tamamushi design is not capable of flight because of the stability problem. Chuhachi might have failed at the first flight, but it wouldn't have taken him long to figure it out and fly," said the aerodynamics expert, who only had to add a horizontal stabiliser and tailfin to the craft he flew.

"If he had got a 12 horsepower engine, he could have flown before the Wright brothers' success, because the difference [between his design and their flight] is 12 years," said Noguchi, now the head of an aviation consulting company.

Perhaps the most impressive part of Ninomiya's story is the fact that he arrived at an understanding of the key principles of aeronautical engineering - the relationship between lift force, speed and wing area - through observation, independently of aviation pioneers elsewhere.

"Many papers were published in Europe, and aviation pioneers shared information, but Chuhachi Ninomiya didn't have any relationship with Europe," Noguchi said. He developed his own ideas independently, and didn't have any education in science. But he was interested in flying since childhood and just observed nature - birds and insects - and made measurements such as their wing area."

Ignored by the army

Ninomiya's success was set back by his need to acquire an engine which was prohibitively expensive. After his requests to the army for financial backing were repeatedly rejected started a chemical business in Osaka to raise the money. But, said Noguchi "it took a long time to be successful, and he was too late."

The successful flight by the Wright brothers' left Ninomiya disheartened. "After he heard the news of the Wright brothers' successful flight, he stopped the development [of his designs] and burned most of his documents and designs." But the designs sent by Ninomiya to the military survived, allowing the contsruction of the Tamamushi.

Ninomiya, who died in 1936 at the age of 70, did not end his days in embittered obscurity. In 1921, the officer who had rejected Ninomiya's ideas wrote a belated apology to him, awarding him a commendation, and he became known as the 'father of Japanese aircraft' to the Japanese aviation community of the day. And every April in Japan, the pioneering work of Ninomiya - almost unknown outside aviation circles - are quietly celebrated in his home country.